FITS Newsletter Home

Contributed by Dave Guinee, Associate Professor of Classical Studies and Faculty Development Coordinator

At the beginning of the semester Tom Dickinson, Dave Berque, and I met a number of times with FITS to discuss absence preparedness, the theme of this issue of the FITS Newsletter. It is hard to ignore the many voices out there telling us that we need to be afraid of the coming flu epidemic, and we probably shouldn’t, but none of us really want to think seriously about what a real flu epidemic could mean for us (let alone bigger issues like global warming and shrinking oil reserves). The H1N1 virus, however, is a reality, and we need to consider how we can continue to meet the needs of our students when either they or we are unable to attend classes because of illness.

As we continued to discuss the issue, however, we saw that we were really dealing with a broader and much more interesting issue. How can we employ technology simply to communicate with our students better? As Tom Dickinson pointed out, we all have to accommodate student athletes and students with family emergencies on a regular basis. Students and faculty regularly miss class because of illness. And, frankly, it would be better for students to stay home when they’re sick, keeping their germs to themselves, rather than make a brave effort to attend class because they are afraid they will miss important information. Moodle and other tools can make it much easier for us to give students the security of feeling they always know what they need to be doing and when it is due. When they miss a class, they can be sure that they will receive handouts. They can find out for themselves how their grades look. When a faculty member creates an update to provide a more thorough explanation of an assignment, they can upload it to Moodle rather than waiting until the next class. I can assure you, after having read reams of student opinion forms on COF last year, that students appreciate this kind of security. What we realized in discussing the H1N1 issue was that we need not develop drastic new procedures, but to become more conscious and intentional about things we already do well.

One thing I have found in working with the FITS staff in last summer’s workshop and in various Moodle training sessions is that they have no agenda of making us all adopt unwanted technologies. They are not the Borg, and I have not yet heard a FITS staff member claim that “resistance is futile.” They are here to help us find ways to accomplish our teaching, research, and artistic goals, and they will meet us at our level. I have been surprised to learn that quite a few faculty do not yet use Moodle for their courses. To those faculty I can only say that the investment of about an hour of training time with a FITS staff member will give you the tools to ensure that your students always have access to your syllabus, assignments, and handouts; doing this will make your classes far more accessible to those students who must miss class for one reason or another.

Would you like an easier way of administering tests to student athletes away for competitions? Ways to get more students to visit office hours? What about ways to give students an expanded explanation of a difficult concept you didn’t have class time for? Can we find a cost-effective way of having a guest lecturer appear in our classes? All of these are teaching goals that instructional technology can support, and they are all relevant both to the issue of absence preparedness and the way that work is being done in the world awaiting our students after graduation.

Contributed by Linda Martin, Coordinator of English Language Support and International Services and Part-time Instructor of English

Finding new strategies to encourage my students to develop their writing skills is always at the forefront of my pedagogy. Although I am still a novice with technological methodologies, I am becoming fond of the idea of teaching beyond the walls of my classrooms with the use of technology. I’ve always been a student of alternative approaches to education when I see a clear benefit. With continued experimentation with Moodle applications such as its Forum feature, I have found innovative ways to teach my students and extraordinary ways for them to learn, not only from me, but also from one another.

There are multiple transitions for most international (and non-native speakers) students when it comes to understanding the teaching and learning styles in a DePauw classroom environment. Often, cultural and societal traditions are still active in their mindsets and can influence their oral participation among their peers. However, I have learned that with Moodle’s Forum feature, I can minimize these inhibitors and establish a more equal rhetorical environment. Here is one example that I find most useful.

One of my strategies is to establish robust discussions related to our weekly readings. Sometimes during these classroom discussions when we have achieved a heightened level of critical thinking and expression, I observe body language among the students that can alter or even inhibit the direction of our discussions. Who is really going to express themselves about the topic in front of their peers? Who would dare say something less than totally flattering about his/her government or even about America’s government? So, I created the Readers’ Discussion Forum. In this required weekly discussion group, teams are created for each week consisting of either three or four students – depending upon the total number of students in the class. The team members decide which role each will play: Initiator – the one who initiates the discussions; Provocateur – the one who stimulates the discussions with probing comments or questions; Summarizer – the one who reads and captures the essence of everyone’s comments and identifies the thread(s), or main ideas that connect the responses. Questions are developed by the team and sent to me by Monday morning of the week the readings are to be read and discussed. This means that a team must be “ahead” of the rest of the class in their reading of the materials. I review the questions to ensure that they will promote thoughtful and stimulating responses. All week, students are posting their responses to the questions as well as replying to each other’s responses.

What are some of the benefits of this type of teaching and learning? Students are comfortable writing from their own laptops; they can be reflective and take the time to compose more thoughtful responses than when speaking in an in-class discussion; they learn to respect other perspectives even if contradictory to their own personal values; they practice their writing skills; absences do not cause obstacles to completing their assignments or to miss interacting with their peers; active participation is guaranteed. In addition to developing critical thinking and enhancing writing skills, technological skills are also developed that can be applied later in different situations.

As an educator, I see an embedded value that I cannot always accomplish in the classroom - a level of intellectual curiosity that is cultivated through writing in a discussion format, which could also happen with our students who are native speakers of English. Through the use of forums, I have found that students’ thinking processes are enhanced by and developed through these extended opportunities for communicating and writing. Because classes are determined by time block parameters, time is a factor that limits group discussions and it can diminish both a charged discussion and/or the epiphany of a new concept. However, in the Moodle Forum, a student can continue to express himself/herself and other students will respond accordingly. It becomes an ongoing conversation throughout the week in and outside of the classroom.

I believe there are numerous pedagogical benefits to using technologies that allow us to extend beyond the walls of the traditional classroom. As these technologies become more sophisticated, staying familiar with them and their proper uses will allow us and our students, in general, to benefit from expanded learning opportunities.

Contributed by Michael Gough, Instructional Technologist and Coordinator of Student Technology Support

Student Technology Support (formally START) offers curricular-based technology support for students in the form of training workshops, open labs and one-on-one consultations for all courses on campus. We invite you to call upon Student Technology Support for assistance with curricular projects. If you are interested in having a workshop, open lab or specialized support provided for your courses, please contact me soon, so we may discuss your plans. We’d love to help your students!

We also support students with the use of technologies that can reduce the impact of multiple absences from class. Many of these technologies may require some initial training for your students in advance. That is, an ill student may not feel well enough to learn how to use a new technology, so demonstrations or workshops on these technologies should be scheduled as early in the semester as is feasible.

If you are planning technology-rich student projects, we are here to help answer your questions, such as:

Do students have access to the software tools required to complete the project?

• A listing of software sold with student university laptops is located at: http://www.depauw.edu/univ/laptop/LaptopFAQ.asp#Whatisincluded. Please note that Adobe Dreamweaver is no longer included but is available in the labs.
• Students may also freely download additional software tools at: http://www.depauw.edu/it/helpdesk/downloads/
• Remember to require students to have these programs installed before the class time it is needed (Student Technology Support can help students with this).
• If you would like to utilize software that is not listed on these web pages, please contact me at michaelgough@depauw.edu to discuss possibilities.

What kind of technology help and software training can my students receive?

• Students can get general technology support from the Help Desk in the Union Building, lower level.
• Student Technology Support can provide software training for your students. We are located in the Digital Media Lab (dml) on the lower level of the Roy O. West Library. Student Technology Support is also co-located with the Help Desk.
• Visit http://www.depauw.edu/it/student/ for our hours, scheduled workshops and more information.
• Students may email helpdesk@depauw.edu or StudentTechnologySupport@depauw.edu with questions.

Where are labs with curriculum-specific software for my project?

• A listing of computer labs and available specialized software is here: http://www.depauw.edu/it/labs

Please contact Michael Gough (michaelgough@depauw.edu) or visit FITS if you have any questions related to Student Technology Support (http://www.depauw.edu/it/student/).

Contributed by Lynda S. LaRoche, Assistant Director of Instructional & Learning Services (I.L.S.) and Moodle Support Coordinator

This past spring FITS researched the possibilities for a Moodle upgrade and presented the options to the Academic Technology Advisory Committee (ATAC) for their recommendation on behalf of the Faculty. After studying these possibilities, ATAC formally endorsed an upgrade to Moodle 1.9.5 to be effective for the 2009/2010 academic year. This article highlights several feature enhancements plus behind-the-scenes improvements that refine the performance of Moodle.

Behind-the-Scenes Improvements:

• Major performance improvements with forums
• Server-side optimization that improves scalability and performance
• Security enhancements
• Updated default settings based on faculty feedback

Researching and implementing Moodle upgrades are ways FITS partners with faculty members to offer the most appropriate instructional tools for university teaching and students’ learning. We encourage you to share your suggestions and concerns with us because your experiences can help us improve our resources.  Please ask us for help in discovering new uses for Moodle technologies!

FITS is offering a variety of events centered around teaching and learning with technology.  Events labeled as webinars are archived online for faculty interested in watching at a later date.  These can be accessed from the list of links at the bottom of this post.  For a complete, updated list of FITS events for this semester, please see http://www.depauw.edu/univ/fits/events/e….

October 13
mitc Open House
Come for a tour of the Music Instructional Technology Center, a lab devoted to technology to make and edit music, as well as the audio recording studio.
http://www.depauw.edu/music/mitc/
3:00 - 5:00 p.m.;  mitc Lab (inside GCPA Music Library)
(Introductory mitc session starts at 3:30 p.m. and the recording studio at 4:15 p.m.)

November 2
New Media Consortium (NMC) Webinar
Adobe First Mondays: Adobe AIR for HTML
http://www.nmc.org/cal
Time/Location TBA

November 3
Moodle Users Group (MUG)
Join your Moodle colleagues to share ideas, ask questions, and discuss ways that Moodle can be used in teaching and learning.
4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.; Julian 111

November 9
ELI Webinar
Using Electronic Course Portfolios to Support the Scholarship of Teaching
Bridget Piernik-Yoder, Assistant Professor, Department of Occupational Therapy, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
http://net.educause.edu/UpcomingSeminars/9321
Time/Location TBA

November 11
DyKnow Users Group Meeting-Brown Bag
Introduction to the DyKnow upgrade.
11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.;  Julian 278

November 18
Tablet Users Group Meeting-Brown Bag
Share Tablet PC pedagogies with colleagues, learn some tips for using tablets, and receive updates on up and coming technologies related to Tablet PCs.
11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.; Julian 152

November 18
GIS Day
Join the global GIS Day celebration to learn about GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and to discover how DePauw faculty, staff, and students are using GIS.
http://www.depauw.edu/univ/gis/GIS_Day_2009/
3:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.; Julian Atrium

November 30
Faculty Showcase: Supporting Lecture with Screen-Capturing Software
Dan Gurnon and Dave Guinee will demonstrate and describe how they use screen-capturing software to create more detailed explanations to questions that come up in class, to create “active answer keys”, and to create tutorials to help students with out-of-class assignments. Dan and Dave both use Camtasia, a screen recording program with an easy-to-use interface.
4:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.; Julian 111

December 3
Moodle Users Group (MUG)
Join your Moodle colleagues to share ideas, ask questions, and discuss ways that Moodle can be used in teaching and learning. Please feel free to bring your lunch to this brown-bag discussion.
11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.; Julian 111

Archived events and recordings:
http://www.educause.edu/podcasts
http://www.educause.edu/Archives/8996 (webinars)
http://www.educause.edu/ELIResources (podcasts, videos, online events-please click the tabs)
http://www.nmc.org/adobemondays/(webinars)
http://campustechnology.com/webcasts/list/webinars.aspx

Tom Dickinson, Professor of Education Studies and Faculty Instructional Technology Support (FITS) Faculty Coordinator

Imagine this professional scenario: You get to work with highly trained, highly talented individuals whose whole orientation is summed up by the statement “How can I help?” You get to play with cutting edge technology and be continually informed about applications and opportunities of these new technologies. You get to work with your peers at the University and highly talented and motivated K-12 teachers from surrounding public schools. And you get course release time, a nifty office, and your name on the door to boot.

What possible professional opportunity could this be? The FITS Faculty Coordinator position. And you can apply for this position just as I did.

FITS—Faculty Instructional Technology Support—is a group of highly trained and talented individuals who work with faculty to provide instructional technology support for their teaching and professional endeavors. Most of the group is housed in the basement of Roy O. West Library with satellite groups in the Julian Math and Science Center (GIS support) and the Green Center for the Performing Arts (audio and recording support). The Faculty Coordinator’s position is an integral part of the FITS team. During my time in FITS I’ve had the opportunity to:

• Attend national technology conferences and deliver presentations on technology usage;
• Enhance my own use of technology through discussion with my FITS colleagues and DePauw faculty members;
• Pilot test a variety of new, cutting edge technology components;
• Act as a consultant for DePauw faculty and their instructional needs;
• Help plan and deliver various campus technology presentations on Moodle, teaching larger classes and absence preparedness;
• Help plan and deliver the FITS Summer Workshop for DePauw faculty members;
• Help plan and deliver K-12 Faculty Workshops for teachers from surrounding school systems;
• Brief local school administrators on the use of instructional technology and its use in schools;
• Write for the FITS newsletter;
• Pilot test the most recent Moodle upgrade to version 1.9.5;
• Participate in the Moodle User Group meetings and the Faculty Showcase demonstrations on the use of instructional technology;
• Teach ITAP students;
• Act as the “eyes and ears” for FITS among the faculty and at faculty gatherings;
• Serve as an advocate for instructional technology to the campus.

The position of FITS Faculty Coordinator reports to the Chief Information Officer, Carol Smith, and the position, as Carol has conceived it, is highly flexible and adaptable to the skills, abilities and needs of the faculty member occupying the position. Responsibilities of the position currently include:

• Fifteen hours a week during both academic semesters devoted to FITS work (this is the equivalent of one academic course assignment; the FITS Faculty coordinator is provided with one course each semester of reassigned time);
• Participation in ongoing FITS activities (summer workshops, faculty presentations, staff meetings, writing for newsletters, etc.);
• Winter Term assignment to FITS (with Winter Term credit provided for the faculty member);
• One month assignment to FITS during the summer, usually in June to cover the FITS summer workshops for DePauw faculty and K-12 faculty (with appropriate compensation based on faculty member’s salary);
• A two-year commitment to the position.

Faculty members have the ability to establish flexible hours based on their teaching schedules although the flexible hours must be contained within a normal work day of 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. since FITS is a working office on campus. There is also considerable room for a faculty member to suggest major projects that impact technology usage on the campus, to develop programs and presentations, as well as to continue the traditional role of the coordinator that has been established.

During the Fall 2009 semester the position of FITS Faculty Coordinator will be advertised for the academic years 2010-2012. Interested faculty members are highly encouraged to apply and any member of the FITS team would be happy to talk about the position (and that includes the current Faculty Coordinator!).

Think of this position as an opportunity to provide service to your peers and the profession, an opportunity for unbounded learning, a chance to work with one of the very best units on campus, and an opportunity to play with some really neat toys!